Thread: Re: Movers & Shakers was: Dawn League

Not disagreeing in general, but if that war the goal why not just make
them nobles, even high nobles (perhaps heirs if not sitting themselves)?

Similarly in the Coalition, they don't need to be freelancers with a beat
down Far Trader. I ran concurrent campaign with typical RCES freelancers
bit also had a RCN/RCMC campaign running concurrently wroth same players.
It would let the firmer discover things while the latter could be the
hammer and anvil after with state of the art equipment (they started on a
Victrix and ended up on a clipper. I had planned on them crewing tge
Belladonna which would ultimately head to Terra with a modified Children of
Earth, but campaign fizzled before that). Would shift back to the former
when the latter get caught up in unfun mundane military life with
occasional shifts back.

Easy enough to extend that to a political campaign where they are Assembly
members.

I did modified random tables to stay at low/high rank in RC so one player
could be a technarch from Oriflamme and another could be a Schalli Sea Lord
and another an Aubani shipping magnate, etc and to be thorough, though
never used them also for Regency and 3I. The noble titles were covered, but
I duplicated Imperial ranks for each Domain so each Domain had its own
Grand Admiral under its Archduke, etc.

- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Mar 24, 2014 7:54 AM, <> wrote:

>
>
> Dave,First, I really appreciate you taking your time to respond to my
> naive question. I'm finding the insight into the process of a
> professional game designer fascinating. I've never had to worry about
> publishing costs or time tables/deadlines for new products, and honestly
> had never even thought about how that influences what a game company gets
> to market or DOESN'T get to market.
>
> One reason I chose New Era as the background for this new campaign was
> because the players could possibly be movers and shakers if they wanted to
> go that route. In the established Third Imperium, well, there's not much
> a group of players can do to really change things on the broad campaign
> level. The group seems to be enjoying the "from the ashes" vibe of the
> campaign so far, and I'm enjoying see a new group exposed to Traveller.
>
> Also, thank you for the insight into the RC. I detested the RC when I was
> first reading the New Era background info, they seemed nothing but the
> worst sort of bullies and opportunists. But seeing your explanations of the
> whys and hows makes them much more human to me, even if they are deeply
> flawed.
>
> Regards,
> Tim aka bardbear
>
>
>
>

> Not disagreeing in general, but if that war the goal why not just make
them nobles, even high nobles (perhaps heirs if not sitting themselves)?

Uxi--

You make an excellent point, but I must admit that GDW did not make that
easy, (what's the plural of "mea culpa?" "We'sa culpa?") as we did not
provide much support for a nobility or high-level leader campaign. (I
think someone after GDW, maybe SJG, finally did.) I used to run such
campaigns (and even wanted to introduce a nobility campaign as an
alternate TNE campaign, but Frank said, "no, we have to focus on the
existing universe for a while") but I had to make almost all of that stuff
out of the existing economic and ship construction rules.

Certainly GDW took Tim's point that PC groups were lucky to have a ship to
"make a difference" with, and TNE was intended to open up the game to
allow that, as was MT before it.

> Similarly in the Coalition, they don't need to be freelancers with a beat
> down Far Trader. I ran concurrent campaign with typical RCES freelancers
bit also had a RCN/RCMC campaign running
> concurrently wroth same players.
> It would let the firmer discover things while the latter could be the
hammer and anvil after with state of the art
> equipment (they started on a
> Victrix and ended up on a clipper. I had planned on them crewing tge
Belladonna which would ultimately head to Terra
> with a modified Children of
> Earth, but campaign fizzled before that). Would shift back to the former
when the latter get caught up in unfun mundane
> military life with occasional shifts back.
>
> Easy enough to extend that to a political campaign where they are Assembly
> members.

I did a couple like that, one was a Dune Harkonnen vs. Atreides-style
nobility campaign, the other was a guy who ran an arms-production company
from his own airless world which was interlocked with three other
campaigns. He did the high-level business and politics, another of the
groups ran one of his ships (named Belladonna) that he would send out on
missions, the third was the crew of a privateer operating on the frontier,
and the fourth was a mercenary company. We would schedule times when we
could get 2, or 3 of the groups together at the same time and I would
weave them together into a joint op so they could partially cooperate and
partially step on each other's toes. Very memorable when we could get
people's schedules to work out, given they were spread from MD to NC.

But I don't think it would be fair to say that GDW put out enough stuff to
make it easy for ambitious refs to do stuff like that. It was on my list
of things to do, but it didn't get into FF&S (how do you build a firearms
factory? I made them buy many tons of parts and materials from the trade
tables, then use the starship construction rules to convert those into
buildings, machinery, etc. Stole a lot of TL R&D flow charts from other SF
games, spend a month on research, roll to see if you get to the next box,
+DMs for additional money spent/scientists hired/lab equipment built--that
was all CT source material) and it got into WTH only abstractly.

Did you come up with rules for politics, government administration and
regulations, or did you mostly do a lot of Ref roleplaying for the NPC
leaders?

> I did modified random tables to stay at low/high rank in RC so one
player
> could be a technarch from Oriflamme and another could be a Schalli Sea Lord
> and another an Aubani shipping magnate, etc and to be thorough, though
never used them also for Regency and 3I. The noble titles were covered,
but
> I duplicated Imperial ranks for each Domain so each Domain had its own
Grand Admiral under its Archduke, etc.
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
> On Mar 24, 2014 7:54 AM, <> wrote:
>
>> Dave,First, I really appreciate you taking your time to respond to my
naive question. I'm finding the insight into the process of a
>> professional game designer fascinating. I've never had to worry about
publishing costs or time tables/deadlines for new products, and
honestly
>> had never even thought about how that influences what a game company gets
>> to market or DOESN'T get to market.
>> One reason I chose New Era as the background for this new campaign was
because the players could possibly be movers and shakers if they wanted
to
>> go that route. In the established Third Imperium, well, there's not much
>> a group of players can do to really change things on the broad campaign
level. The group seems to be enjoying the "from the ashes" vibe of
the
>> campaign so far, and I'm enjoying see a new group exposed to Traveller.
Also, thank you for the insight into the RC. I detested the RC when I
was
>> first reading the New Era background info, they seemed nothing but the
worst sort of bullies and opportunists. But seeing your explanations of
the
>> whys and hows makes them much more human to me, even if they are deeply
flawed.
>> Regards,
>> Tim aka bardbear
>

Uxi,
Having them be "movers and shakers" wasn't the goal, but i want it to be a viable option if the group wants to try that sort of campaign.

Two of my players could not play Third Imperium nobles if i put a loaded Gauss autocannon to their heads and tried to force them ;)

Also, i had the impression that it was the rare Noble that had ANY sort of influence outside her domain, and that the 3I was pretty much as static as imperial China during any dynasty.

That insistence on *some* players and certain editions of Traveller that the period from 1100-1110 was the ONLY time to play a campaign was really off putting to me. It was/is like part of the player base was stuck in a time-loop.

Oh yeah, I had a couple guys like that. They would usually play retainers,
usually muscle though one guy like playing slicer/hacker, to an NPC noble
(avoiding issues of one player lording it over another).

- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Mar 24, 2014 7:02 PM, <> wrote:

>
>
> Uxi,
> Having them be "movers and shakers" wasn't the goal, but i want it to be a
> viable option if the group wants to try that sort of campaign.
>
> Two of my players could not play Third Imperium nobles if i put a loaded
> Gauss autocannon to their heads and tried to force them ;)
>
> Also, i had the impression that it was the rare Noble that had ANY sort of
> influence outside her domain, and that the 3I was pretty much as static as
> imperial China during any dynasty.
>
> That insistence on *some* players and certain editions of Traveller that
> the period from 1100-1110 was the ONLY time to play a campaign was really
> off putting to me. It was/is like part of the player base was stuck in a
> time-loop.
>
>